The United Nations Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) conference has begun in New York, and before the gavel sounded opening the meeting, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon cracked the whip on member states, urging them to get the treaty hammered out and enforced on their populations.
In a statement released just prior to the commencement of the ATT conference on March 18, Ban Ki-moon said he was “confident that Member States will overcome their differences and muster the political will needed to agree on this landmark Treaty.”
Muster the political will sounds like UN argot for ignore the Constitution.
Moon is surely pleased with President Barack Obama’s willingness to do just that. As The New American has reported, within hours of securing his reelection, President Obama ordered the U.S. delegation to the UN to vote in favor of the globalist gun grab.
Then, using the Sandy Hook school shooting not only as a pretext, but a prop, Obama announced his intention to issue 23 executive orders infringing on the people’s right to keep and bear arms as protected by the Second Amendment to the Constitution.
Of course, not only is the assumption of absolute control over the right to purchase, trade, and own a weapon unconstitutional, but the mandating of such measures via edicts that are afforded the color of law by the rest of the federal government is, as well.
It’s easy to tell that the secretary-general is enthused by President Obama’s acceleration of the seizure of weapons. In his statement he declared that “after a very long journey, our final destination is in sight — a robust arms trade treaty.”
How robust is the proposed arms trade treaty? A brief description of some of the provisions should be enough to illicit anger and action from Americans determined to preserve their right to keep and bear arms.
The Arms Trade Treaty (and the Programme of Action that undergirds it) propose to mandate that if a member state cannot get rid of privately owned small arms legislatively, then the control of “customs, police, intelligence, and arms control” will be placed under the power of a board of UN bureaucrats operating out of the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs, as stated in Section III, Paragraphs 7 and 8 of the Programme of Action.
This provision includes the deployment of UN peacekeeping forces in a member state to seize and destroy “weapons stockpiles.” No definition of stockpile is given, but by the time seizures occur, it will be too late to make that argument.
In order to assist these blue-helmets and their disarmament overlords in their search and seizure of ammunition, Section III, Paragraph 10 mandates that member states develop technology to improve the UN’s ability to detect stockpiles of ammo and arms.
This brings to mind the imminent deployment by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) of portable invisible lasers developed by Genia Laboratories (a company created by CIA offshoot In-Q-Tel) that can detect even trace amounts of gunpowder from over 50 yards away. The laser reportedly can penetrate walls, glass, and metal. DHS was scheduled to take possession of the devices at the end of 2012, according to testimony presented on Capitol Hill in November 2011.
History is instructive on this point, as one recalls that the “shot heard ’round the world” on Lexington Green was fired because King George sent British troops to seize the ammunition stockpile stored outside of Lexington.
The effort at eradication of private gun ownership is more insidious than it appears. On page 25 of the 1997 UN Secretary General’s Report entitled “Criminal Justice Reform and Strengthening of Legal Institutions Measures to Regulate Firearms” (of which the United States was a signatory), a part of the regulations agreed to by the United States is the administering of a psychological test before a person is cleared to buy ammunition.
Not only will the UN control the manufacture of ammunition and the ownership, trade, and purchase of firearms, but it will empower agents (all likely chosen from the domestic corps of bureaucrats) to administer psychological tests to anyone deigning to approach the international shadow government to appeal for the right to buy a weapon or purchase ammunition for a weapon he already owns.
Of course, the globalists (including our own president and secretary of state) assure the people of the world that ratification of the arms trade treaty would not affect the domestic use of firearms. They point out that countries participating in the treaty would only be required to pass laws regulating the possession, sale, and transfer of weapons internationally.
The text of the proposed treaty as currently drafted, however, severely curtails the Second Amendment rights of Americans in the ways described above, as well as imposing restrictions on ammunition production and sales that will have a direct impact on the price and availability of ammunition in the United States.
Furthermore, the treaty is full of key terms that are vague and ill-defined (if they are defined at all) that could be enforced by international disarmament agents (or their domestic counterparts) in any number of ways that violate the Constitution’s prohibition against the infringement of the right to keep and bear arms.
Would state militias, for example, be considered an armed force that must be disarmed in the name of global security? Americans zealous of their constitutionally guaranteed liberties are well aware that the existence of these state militias is just as much a fundamental part of the Second Amendment as is the right of the individual to keep and bear arms.
As the conference progresses, it remains to be seen how fully the U.S. delegation will cooperate with the UN’s quest to disarm civilians. Other countries, however, have already telegraphed their intent to push hard for the secretary-general’s “robust arms trade treaty.”
Just before the gavel sounded opening the conference, foreign ministers of Argentina, Australia, Costa Rica, Finland, Japan, Kenya, and the United Kingdom issued a joint statement calling for “flexibility and commitment from everyone to secure a treaty which will save lives and reduce human suffering, and to bring transparency and consistency to the global arms trade whose legacy will endure for generations to come.”
In a press release issued March 15, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said that the United States is committed to “working with our international partners” to “reach consensus on an Arms Trade Treaty that advances global security and respects national sovereignty and the legitimate arms trade.”
Kerry went on to declare that the United States would not support any treaty that “would be inconsistent with U.S. law and the rights of American citizens under our Constitution, including the Second Amendment.”
As part of our effort to warn citizens of the threats to our liberties and the Constitution that protects them, this reporter will be in New York City covering the Arms Trade Treaty conference and reporting on every aspect of the arms control negotiations. We are committed to staying in front of any movement by the United States delegation to accept or advance any provision encroaching even slightly on the right of Americans to keep and bear arms or to surrender our sovereignty to foreign leaders or to the globalist government-in-waiting.
Related Articles:
UN Arms Trade Treaty, Day Two: Focus Is Transfer, Registry of Firearms
UN Arms Trade Treaty: National Lists of Gun Owners; Ammunition Regulation
Joe A. Wolverton, II, J.D. is a correspondent for The New American and travels frequently nationwide speaking on topics of nullification, the NDAA, and the surveillance state. He can be reached at [email protected].
